Remediation fails on ESXi 8.0.3g: “/usr/sbin/esxupdate returned with exit status: 14” due to incompatible HTI VIB in HPE custom image

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

 

• After upgrading the ESXi host from version 7.0.x to 8.0.3g, the host became non-compliant with the Non-Critical Host Patches baseline. When attempting to remediate the host via vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) to install the necessary update - VMware Tools 13.0.5 Async Release - the installation failed with the error: /usr/sbin/esxupdate returned with exit status: 14

• In vmware-vum-server.log, repeated lines appear:
  Install on host: <hostname> failed. Error: Platform Configuration Error: /usr/sbin/esxupdate returned with exit status: 14

• In /var/log/esxupdate.log, a dependency error reveals:

  2025-10-16T19:35:22Z Er(11) esxupdate[2106159]: esximage.Errors.DependencyError: On platform embeddedEsx, VIB HTI_bootbank_hti-upgrade-vib_1.4.0-6OEM.703.0.0.20842708 requires esx-version << 7.1.0, but the requirement cannot be satisfied within the ImageProfile.

   

 

Environment

ESXi 8.x

Cause

The HPE custom image for ESXi 8.0.3g being used includes a legacy VIB — HTI_bootbank_hti-upgrade-vib_1.4.0-6OEM.703.0.0.20842708 — which was originally built for ESXi 7.0.x. The VIB metadata contains a dependency constraint: requires esx-version << 7.1.0
esxupdate aborts the transaction with a DependencyError, which leads to the exit status: 14 failure in vLCM.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must remove or replace the incompatible HTI VIB so that the image is valid for ESXi 8.0.3g.

esxcli software vib remove -n hti-upgrade-vib

Confirm VIB has been removed - esxcli software vib list | grep -i hti

Proceed with host remediation.